Twin Temptation

“C’mon. Our ride’s over there.” He took Maddie’s elbow and urged her toward the curb. The street in front of Eva’s apartment was narrow. Vehicles took up every parking space and two were double-parked. Since it wasn’t a Manhattan thoroughfare, traffic was minimal at this time of night. Still, Jase paused to look both ways. His bad feeling hadn’t eased.

A car was moving slowly toward them from the left. Jase eased Maddie to his other side, using his body to block hers. Once the vehicle had passed by, he said, “Let’s go.”

“I can’t believe that she robbed Eva Ware Designs, can you?”

“A good investigator keeps an open—” The roar of an engine cut him off, and he caught the sudden blur of movement to his right. He had just enough time to register that the cream-colored sedan matched the description of the car that had run Eva down.

Maddie turned her head and he felt her freeze. The headlights flashed on, blinding them both.

There was no time to think. No time even to panic. He just let his reflexes take over. Whipping his arm around Maddie’s waist, he lifted her.

The roar of the motor grew louder, the lights closer. Jase leapt into the air and twisted his body to take the brunt of the impact as they landed on the taxi’s hood. Holding Maddie tightly, he rolled and brought her with him to the sidewalk on the other side of the cab. This time it was his shoulder that took the hit and his breath whooshed out. For a second, he just held on tightly. Then he said, “You all right?”

“Yes. You?”

Easing her next to the side of the taxi, he got to his feet. But all he could see were the taillights of the car just before it careened around the corner.

MADDIE LAY flat on the sidewalk, her mind still spinning while she tried desperately to process what had just happened. Her body was cold and numb. And all she could hear was a sort of soft buzzing sound like white noise.

Someone had tried to run her and Jase down.When she’d heard the racing motor and turned her head, those blinding lights had been so close. She’d even been able to see the hood ornament.

Voices began to penetrate. She recognized Jase’s. Someone else was speaking with an accent.

“I saw part of the plate number. You blocked my view when you landed on the hood of my car.”

“What kind of car?”

Jase’s voice again.

“A light-colored sedan, a Mercedes,” replied the voice with the accent.

“Did you see the driver?”

“He was wearing a jacket with a hood.”

It had really happened then. Someone had almost succeeded in running them down. If it hadn’t been for Jase’s quick reflexes, they would both be lying out in the street. Bleeding. Dead.

And the driver of the car would have gotten away with it. Again.

The bastard.

Fury gave her the energy to scramble to her feet.

Jase turned to her and joined her on the curb. He ran his hands up and down her arms as he studied her. “You’re all right.”

“You too.” She wrapped both arms around him and simply held on. Something else moved through her then, something that had the fear and anger fading. And another kind of fear building. She realized that she didn’t want to let Jase go. Not now.

Maybe not ever.

13

MADDIE STOOD with Jase and Detective Stanton in a small anteroom. In the adjacent room, beyond the one-way glass, Michelle sat with her hands folded on a table, her face drawn, her knuckles white. Although the detective had questioned her for over an hour, Michelle hadn’t varied from the story she’d told Jase and Maddie.

“I’ll keep after her for a while,” Stanton said, “but she’s pretty stubborn. She denies ever having the security code to the Madison Avenue building or having anything to do with the robbery.”“Cho could have had the security code,” Jase pointed out.

“True. She refuses to talk about the hundred thousand in her account.”

“It didn’t stay in her bank account very long,” Jase said. “According to my partner, the money appeared via a bank check, but was withdrawn in cash two days later.”

“It’s the amount and the timing that are so incriminating,” Maddie said.

“I agree. It looks as though she needed some cash fast and she knew just how to get it,” Stanton replied.

“My partner is tracking down where it came from,” Jase said. “And I’m expecting to hear back from an informant who knows a lot of fences in the area.”

The detective turned to Maddie. “You look better than you did when you came in.”

She managed a smile. “Thanks. I want to know who was driving that car.”

“Working on it. I’ve sent a couple of uniforms to go door to door. The bastard had to be waiting for you. Same way he waited for your mother. We’re running the partial plate number. Your description of the hood ornament matches well with the taxi driver’s certainty that it was a light-colored late-model Mercedes, so that should narrow the search.”

Jase slipped his hand into hers. “Maddie, the car that ran down your mother was also described as a light-colored sedan.”

She turned to him. “You think it might be the same driver?”

“Could be,” Stanton said. “Killers are unbelievably cocky. The bastard got away clean the first time. Probably figures he can do it again.”

“The one thing we know for sure is that Michelle wasn’t behind the wheel,” Maddie pointed out.

“Right. But she could have an accomplice,” Stanton said. “We haven’t been able to locate Cho yet.”

Maddie shook her head vehemently. She’d already had this discussion with Jase on the ride to the station. “I can’t see Cho running anyone down. I’ll bet he doesn’t even drive.”

Stanton glanced at Jase and then back at Maddie. “I’m checking all possibilities. I’ll be at Eva Ware Designs with a search warrant when it opens tomorrow morning, and I’ll be questioning everyone again about the robbery. Nothing like a couple of suspects to jog everyone’s memory.”

Turning, Maddie studied Michelle through the one-way glass. “My guess would be that she’s gone silent because of her loyalty to her grandfather. I never should have mentioned Cho’s name.”

Stanton’s eyebrows shot up. “You don’t like him for the hit-and-run, but you suspect him for the robbery?”

“I don’t want to,” Maddie said. “They make a pair of unlikely jewel thieves.”

He snorted. “They didn’t have to be pros if they had the security codes. And Eva Ware trusted Michelle enough to give her the key to her apartment.”

“She may open up when you get Cho in here,” Jase said. “Or he may open up once he sees that she’s under suspicion.”

Stanton glanced at his watch. “I’ve had men stationed outside his apartment ever since you called. There’s no sign of him. The apartment is dark, he’s not answering his phone or his door.”

“Maybe he skipped,” Jase said.

Maddie turned from the window to face Stanton and Jase. “Even if Cho or the two of them robbed Eva Ware Designs, I still can’t see either of them running Eva down.”

“Money does strange things to people,” Stanton said.

“Maybe Eva was onto them and confronted them. With her gone, their jobs are secure, Cho’s reputation is golden.” Jase frowned. “The thing is, neither of them has a motive to hire a hit woman to kill Maddie.”

“The two things don’t have to be connected,” Stanton said.

“No,” Jase mused. “But something tells me they are.”

Once again Stanton sighed. “Me too.”

There was a knock at the door, and a young uniformed officer poked his head in. “I’ve got something on the plate that you might be interested in, sir.”

“Report,” Stanton ordered.

“A cream-colored Mercedes sedan with a license plate containing the three numbers we have on the partial is registered to a Ms. Eva Ware.”

For a moment there was dead silence in the room.

Stanton finally turned and said what they all were thinking. “That means that Eva may have been run down by her own car.”

Maddie dug into her tote for the ring of keys Jordan had given her. “I have the key. Jordan told me that Eva kept it in a garage on the block directly behind her apartment building.”

Stanton pulled the key off the ring when she handed it to him. Then he glanced through the one-way glass at Michelle Tan. “The question is whether Eva was as generous with her car keys as she was with the key to her apartment.”

SITTING cross-legged on the sunken floor of the suite’s living room, her back against one of the sofas, Maddie once more pored over the last weeks of Eva Ware’s life as they were minimally recorded in her calendar. After assigning two uniforms to check out the garage and see if the Mercedes was there, Dave Stanton had sent them home.

But the excitement she’d been feeling when they’d arrived at the Donatello and first opened the leather volume had steadily drained away.Dino had dropped off some things at the desk for them while they’d been out. In addition to clothes for both of them, he’d left Jase’s laptop and a file of the financial information he’d been able to dig up so far on everyone either related to or employed by Eva Ware. Nothing had popped on any of them except for the hundred thousand dollars that had briefly resided in Michelle Tan’s bank account.